Then again, Hitler’s Youth, being both an Academy graduate and a Hero’s Apprentice, was well-trained for this too.
I really wished I hadn’t thought that last part. My nervousness surged again. Later—if there was a later—I’d have to have a serious chat with my consider-all-sides-of-the-issue brain about whose side it was on.
I took flight the instant the countdown hit zero. It didn’t seem to be a good idea to fight on the ground when my opponent could literally control the ground.
I had reacted fast, but my opponent’s response was equally fast. With a sound resembling that of an earthquake’s rumbling, an earthen arm rocketed out of the ground after me. Its hand wrapped around my ankles like a giant’s fist before I could dodge out of the way.
As quickly as a retracting yo-yo, the arm sank back down into the ground, but not before slamming me into the turf like a professional wrestler. Everything inside of me bounced around as if I had run headlong into a brick wall. If my personal shield hadn’t been up, I would no doubt have gone splat.
The sun, the moon, and the stars exploded behind my eyes. I shook my head, trying to clear it after the impact. The earthen fist was still around my ankles. I reached out with my powers, trying to break the hard dirt fist up into pieces. I was successful, but Hitler’s Youth added to the fist as quickly as I tried to break it up.
Before I could shift tactics to free myself, the ground underneath me opened up. It swallowing me whole, like a boa constrictor swallowing a mouse. I was plunged into total darkness. There was a grinding sound that sent vibrations through my entire body. Under different circumstances, the overwhelming smell of fresh dirt would have been pleasant. Under these circumstances, it was the smell of a limited air supply—namely the air trapped in my shield—and of imminent death. I immediately lost all sense of which way was up and which way was down. The dirt squeezed tight against my force field. Despite my best efforts, it prevented me from expanding it and give myself some room to maneuver.
If I didn’t do something and do it double quick, either Hitler’s Youth would crush me or I’d run out of breathable air. Either way I’d be just as dead.
Being buried alive had not been a part of my plan. But, as Mike Tyson said, everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Or in my case, buried alive.
Doing my best to swallow the panic that rose within me like nausea, I stretched out my powers. I used them to grope all around in a wide area like a blind octopus for the flesh and blood form of Hitler’s Youth. For the first time I was gratefully for those nanites that had attacked me during the written exam. If it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have developed the technique I was using to try to locate my opponent.
Found him!
I locked onto his body with my powers. I flung him as hard as I could. I wasn’t aiming in any particular direction as I was too disoriented to pick one. I was like a pitcher who had been blindfolded, spun rapidly around in a circle, and then forced to unleashing his best fastball.
Me turning Hitler’s Youth into a human fastball must had broken his concentration on the earth that bound me. The dirt that had been pressing against my shield like a giant trash compactor relaxed. The ground was no longer trying to squeeze me to death. However, I still had to get out of here before Hitler’s Youth recovered his hold on the ground and before I suffocated.
Fortunately, me finding Hitler’s Youth with my powers had told me which way up was. The cessation of the terrific pressure around me allowed me to reshape my force field. Imagining myself as being in the center of an invisible drill bit, I spun out of the ground. I soon shot into the air like a missile launched from a silo.
The sudden bright sunlight blinded me for a few seconds. Still, it was a welcome change from the total darkness I had just been in. Even more welcome was fresh air. I inhaled it hungrily.
As soon as I could see again, I spotted Hitler’s Youth. Apparently, I had been fortunate enough to fling him against a tree. He staggered to his feet at the base of it. His hair was no longer perfectly coiffed. Now it looked like it had been caught in a windstorm. It was streaked with blood.
I had gotten lucky in throwing him blindly into that tree. Sometimes it was better to be lucky than good.
Hitler’s Youth saw me above him. I must give him credit for how quickly he reacted. He threw two fireballs at me. They rocketed up towards me, growing larger as they approached. I didn’t bother dodging them, though I could have easily done so. Instead, I made my personal force field impermeable to air right before the fireballs hit me. They hit my shield, causing me no injury.
In fact, it was quite the opposite. The fireballs only served to strengthen me. As I had with the bomb in the mall, I absorbed the fireballs’ energy. No doubt Hitler’s Youth was shaken from hitting that tree, otherwise he would have remembered the incident at the mall and not tried to attack me this way.
The energy absorbed from the fireballs surged through me like an electric current. The energy built up, demanding release. I concentrated, willing the energy within me to be channeled out again. My eyes burned. Beams of pure energy lanced out of them. Hitler’s Youth tried to dodge out of the way. My energy beams hit the base of a tree he sought cover behind.
There was a massive explosion. Hitler’s Youth was thrown through the air from the force of it. I locked onto his body with my powers, not want to lose track of him in the wooded area he was thrown deeper into.
The tall tree I had hit toppled to the side, the base of it having been pulverized by my energy beams. Branches of other trees popped and crackled as the falling tree ripped through then. Thoom! The tree hit the ground. The sound of it added to the echoes of the explosion seconds before.
I dropped down out of the sky into the wooded area towards where my powers told me Hitler’s Youth was. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Overlord’s node drop out of the sky as well, keeping me in sight to continue to record the action.
I landed on the forest floor. It was noticeably cooler here as the tall trees and their multicolored leaves blotted out most of the sun. Hitler’s Youth was on his hands and knees, obviously hurt, but struggling to get to his feet. If he had been anyone else, I would have admired his persistence.
I picked him up with my powers. I threw him against yet another tree. I was none too gentle about it. He cried out in pain at the impact. I pinned him against the large tree trunk like an insect in a bug collection. I forced his hands together over his head, not wanting him to throw more fire at me. I cast out with my mind, and then used the ropy vines I found to bind Hitler’s Youth’s hand, ankles, and waist to the tree.
In seconds, he was trussed up like a Thanksgiving turkey.
Hitler’s Youth looked at me. There was a cut over his left eye. Blood dripped into that eye, making it demonically red. As if by magic, a miniature cyclone sprang up in front of me. Debris including leaves, dirt, dead branches and the like hit my force field and whipped past me as they were sucked into the powerful small twister. Hitler’s Youth was lost to view in the sudden pandemonium. The twister danced on top of the forest floor, advancing towards me ominously. I wheezed painfully. The breath was literally ripped from my lungs by the twister, no doubt with an assistance from my opponent’s air-manipulation powers.
I had learned my lesson from grappling with the earthen arm that had attacked me earlier—don’t go after the manifestation of the power, go after the power source.
Despite not being able to see Hitler’s Youth thanks to all the swirling debris, I could still feel him with my powers. I grabbed his head with them. It was like picking up a rag doll by the hair. While I Struggled like an asthmatic for a breath that would not come, I slammed Hitler Youth’s head against the tree. I used his head like it was a hammer and the tree was the nail. The twister still approached. I still could not breathe. I flung my opponent’s head forward, and then back against the tree hard.
Again.
Again.
The fourth time was the charm.
>
Like a switch had been flipped, the cyclone died away. I could breathe again. My nose and lungs burned as air filled them. Everything that had been sucked into the twister fell back down to the ground. The sound of the debris hitting the ground was like a burst of machine gun fire.
Once the dust settled, I could see again. Hitler’s Youth was still bound to the tree. His body was limp. His face was down. A steady stream of crimson trickled down his head to plop onto the ground below. Hitler’s Youth’s head hung listlessly between his shoulders. His hair was a bloody mess, more red than blonde now.
I ran my powers over his neck, feeling for a pulse. I had been around the block too many times by now to go up to him and check for one manually. He could have been playing possum.
There was a sickening, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach when I felt nothing at first.
Then I found a pulse. Though Hitler’s Youth was bleeding like a stuck pig, he was still very much alive.
Good.
I turned to the Overlord node which was hovering silently nearby like a silver ghost.
“I came here to see if I could beat him,” I said to the node. My throat felt raw. I cleared my throat. I spat to the side. “I had my doubts as to whether I could. But I had to prove to myself and to all the people who ever belittled me that I could beat him. And now I have. It wasn’t even as hard as I had thought it would be. I guess I’m stronger and tougher than even I had thought.”
I shook my head.
“But I’m not going to kill him. Everyone whose opinion I give a damn about—both Hero and non-Hero—has taught me killing is wrong. They’re correct.” I thought of Athena and the other instructors at the Academy, Amazing Man, and my parents.
I also thought of God. I had been raised Catholic. I had literally been an altar boy. I definitely was no altar boy now. I hadn’t been followed all the rules I had been raised to believe in. Me sleeping with Neha before marriage, for example, was a definite no-no in the eyes of the church. I didn’t know exactly what I believed in anymore. Too much had happened to me and my family for me to swallow what I had been taught about an all-powerful, all-good God without a big bucket of salt to go with it. If God was so good and so great and so loving, then why were my parents dead? Why was Isaac’s sister dead? Why did He let her get raped? It just didn’t make any sense.
Maybe God didn’t exist. Or maybe he was a watchmaker who created the universe, wound it up, and just let everything play out without further interference. Or maybe He was a sadistic SOB who enjoyed playing with us and our emotions.
Or, maybe I was just too stupid and near-sighted to know the mind of God.
Regardless, if there was one thing I had been taught that I still believed was right, it was that “Thou shalt not kill.” If God couldn’t or wouldn’t do what was right, that didn’t mean the rest of us didn’t have too. To do anything less would lead to chaos. Especially for people with superpowers like me. My abilities gave me greater capacity than most people to do harm. Or, to do good. If I didn’t have the right to kill Iceburn, the man who had destroyed what was left of my family, I certainly didn’t have the right to kill Trey.
“If I can’t be a Hero because I won’t kill my opponent in your stupid test, then so be it,” I said to Overlord. I was tearing up. “Being a Hero is all I want to do. It wasn’t always that way, but it’s that way now. It breaks my heart to walk away from the idea of becoming a Hero after working so hard and coming this far. But if you think I’m going to win a Hero’s license at the price of losing my soul, you’re crazy. You tell the proctors that. Also tell them, for trying to force me to violate everything a Hero is supposed to stand for, that they can go straight to hell. I don’t want to be a member of any group where they make you kill to become a member.”
I paused. It was not for effect. Rather, I just wanted to be absolutely sure of what I was about to say. I felt like Julius Caesar about to cross the Rubicon.
“In other words, I quit,” I said.
Alea iacta est. “The die is cast.” There was no turning back now. Since I wasn’t going to be a Hero, maybe I could find a job pulling historical quotes out of my butt.
Maybe I would have noticed it had I not been ranting and raving at Overlord. Maybe I would have noticed it if I weren’t sleep-deprived. I’d like to think I would have. But the fact was I didn’t.
The “it” I didn’t notice wrapped around my head like a kidnap victim’s hood. It forced itself up my nose and into my mouth and down my nose. It burned like acid.
Water from the stream! I thought as I started choking, likely to death. I really should have made sure Hitler’s Youth was unconscious before I started making speeches. I’d have to remember that for next time.
Not that there was going to be a next time.
A watery helmet surrounded my head, dampening sound and blurring my vision. I coughed—or at least tried to—to get the water out of me. I only succeeded in choking harder as the water forced itself further into me like an invading army.
A person can drown in a tiny amount of water if it’s covering his mouth and nose. That was exactly what was happening to me.
Caesar had made it into the history books for his military exploits. I was about to made it into the history books for stupidity and being the first person to drown, standing up, in the middle of a forest, with everything but my head bone-dry.
I tried to latch onto the water and force it out of my body and from around my head with my powers. I had manipulated water before when I had used it to protect me and Hacker from the alien worms on Hephaestus. Now, unfortunately, the water did not heed my powers’ commands. Hitler’s Youth had years of experience manipulating water with his powers. I did not stand a chance against his adeptness.
My body shrieked for oxygen. I felt the dark elevator doors of unconsciousness starting to close around my mind. My vision was darkening. I was desperate. I fell to the ground, twisting in the dirt and decaying plant matter, hoping the ground would absorb the water that writhed around my head like a constricting snake.
If flailing on the ground had an effect, it wasn’t noticeable.
A blurred shadow loomed over me. It was Hitler’s Youth. He must have burned through the thick vines I had used to bind him.
He said something. I couldn’t hear a thing over the water gurgling around me and in my ears.
As if Hitler’s Youth could read my mind, the water in and around my ears cleared away. I could hear again. I couldn’t focus enough to bring my powers to bear on him, though.
“Your problem is, you’ve been hanging out too long with Isaac,” Hitler’s Youth said. Even with my blurred and ever-darkening vision, his face looked triumphant. “You talk way too damn much.”
His hands glowed red with fire.
I wonder which will kill me, was my last thought. Suffocating or burning?
Suddenly, the Overlord node came into my field of vision. A golden beam of energy shot out of it and bathed Hitler’s Youth.
The fire in his hands died. The glob of water around my head collapsed.
Barely conscious, I rolled onto my stomach. I coughed up water, feeling like I had been forced to stand under Niagara Falls. The coughing soon became vomiting. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to lift myself up a bit on my enfeebled arms to avoid inhaling my own vomit. Death by drowning was bad enough. Death by drowning on one’s own vomit was a bridge too far.
After throwing up what felt like everything I had ever eaten my entire life, my stomach finally stopped heaving. Feeling as weak as a sick puppy, I managed to haul myself to my feet. Hitler’s Youth was still bathed in Overlord’s energy beam. He was frozen in place like a paused movie. Only his eyes moved. The look in his eyes was part murderous, part confused.
“Why did you stop him?” I demanded of Overlord. Not that I wasn’t grateful. The answer to my question came to my sluggish mind even as Overlord answered me.
“Contrary to what you both were told, this was not a duel t
o the death,” came Overlord’s proper British voice from the silver-colored node.
“You lied to us,” I said. My throat hurt. My mouth tasted the way pond scum looked.
“Indeed I did. Not of my own volition, of course. I was under instructions from the proctors. The Trials are dangerous, and there is an unfortunately high death rate. The proctors would never expect one of you to kill the other, though.”
It didn’t matter. Even though he hadn’t killed me, Hitler’s Youth would have had Overlord not intervened. I had clearly lost the duel. I had failed this test and flunked out of the Trials.
“Congratulations, Kinetic,” Overlord said. “You have passed this test. Elemental Man, I regret to inform you you have failed.”
At first I thought I hadn’t heard right. Then I saw Trey’s eyes. It looked like they were about to bulge out of his head. My mouth dropped open. Since my breath smelled like a sewer, I immediately closed it.
“What do you mean, I passed and he failed?” I asked. It wasn’t until much later that it occurred to me I shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. “He clearly defeated me. He would’ve killed me if you hadn’t stopped him.”
“Indeed he would have,” Overlord agreed. “That is why I have immobilized him and temporarily nullified his powers. And, that is why he failed. With certain limited exceptions, a Hero does not kill. You all should know that based on your Heroic studies. If someone asks you to kill, even someone with authority over you, you are duty-bound to refuse. Kinetic, not only did you fight Elemental Man, but you spared his life after you had him at your mercy. Since you expected to fail this test by doing so and expected to forgo the opportunity to pursue a Hero’s license, your act of mercy was a great personal sacrifice. That is the sort of person who should be a Hero. Not someone who will kill on command.”
The Omega Superhero (Book 2): Trials Page 18